[Clipart] leechers and pirates

[John Olsen]

regarding various salvos being fired over clker.com etal.:

Am I going to the wrong clker.com?  The one I visit clearly has the  
author as one of the tags and you can sort by that - so that molomen  
and Liftarn submissions can be seen together.   i see  a few of my  
submissions are popular this week.  When I click on one and go to it's  
page right under the site title it says "Johnny Automatic greedy man"

I don't want to get into a name calling debate, but it seems to me  
that "leechers and pirates" have one admirable advantage over our  
little group - they talk a lot less and work a lot more.  I'm gonna  
judge this site by results.

How refreshing to go to a site focused on visual art - clipart and see  
- OMG - a page full of pictures of clipart!

People go to OCAL looking for clipart.  God help them trying to find  
it.  The most likely thing they'll see is a blog feed from someone  
else's blog and words - lots of words.  In fact for something that is  
dedicated to visual art, it profoundly misunderstands the power of  
design and visuals.

As someone who has contributed a file or two here, I am happy to have  
them spread around.  The important part is that the clipart is  
available.  Much of the art I upload is repurposed from public domain  
old books.  I see that as liberating it to be repurposed and used by  
more people than ever would if it just sat lost in a book.   Was that  
the intent of the original illustrator?  Almost certainly not.  But it  
is now in the PD and is there for people to use and reinvent.

Now I'm done talking - I have uploading and librarian work to do.  I  
am in the middle of uploading about 500 files from the old library by  
hand because I have just given up on all the people that have come and  
gone here spouting off how easy something would be to do with just a  
little code that they knew they could write, but never got around to  
doing it.

But I can't fix bugs or add site features  by brute force.

A car is faster than walking, but if I start walking and the car never  
comes, who gets there first?

John Olsen/Johnny Automatic